Since the front page seems to be full of posts complaining about something or other, I’d just like to extend a thank you to the organizers of Ludum Dare. You took a small event and grew it into a worldwide community, and that’s awesome. I want to buy every single one of you a beer.

As far as I can tell, Ludum Dare doesn’t make any money, so it’s still just a few people doing this for free (or at expense) in their spare time. So if you want to complain and suggest changes, remember that nobody forced you to participate, and maybe donating a few dollars would make it a little easier for somebody to take time out of his/her busy schedule to try to meet your demands.

The point is not to win or to meticulously figure out what ratings you got and whether or not any of this is “fair”. You made a game in 2 days. You played a bunch of games that other people created in 2 days. Maybe you became twitter friends with some like-minded people in the community. Isn’t that awesome enough? Celebrate, move on, make more games, improve your craft, and reconvene in 3 months (or in 4 days).

“But we’re just trying to improve ourselves and offer suggestions!” Okay. That’s cool, I get it, and I’m not really criticizing that. I just wanted to offer a positive “great job!” post between the “ugh this would be so much better if…” posts.

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on Monday, May 14th, 2012 at 1:34 pm and is filed under LD #23.
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8 Responses to “Thanks Ludum Dare”

Complain about the people complaining about the complainers! Oh god infinite loop!

I’m not trying to complain, I just wanted to remind people that hey, it’s a game development community that costs nothing to participate in, so worrying too much about the details misses the beauty of the whole thing. Hooray everyone! And if you do want to complain or offer suggestions, maybe think about throwing some money in the tip jar. That’s all!

That wasn’t my suggestion, smarty-pants. The mini-LDs seem more like that, and I’ll be participating in more of them. But the ratings and rankings are a fun part of Ludum Dare- and the key word should be fun. Shooting for the top spot is fun and drives us to improve our games, but examining the results with a magnifying glass and debating the “right” way to collect them and criticizing the system for whatever reason sorta defeats the fun part. And if you do want to crawl over the details and request that the organizers of LD spend their time and money implementing changes that you request, then at least throw a few dollars in their direction. Otherwise just enjoy the free community, play games, and have fun.

Lol yes I know I was being a bit facetious but I agree with you totally. the rankings/ratings should be fun… but it should also be correct… what’s the point having any system at all if it doesn’t correctly reflect the way that people rated/played games and just was a random ordering… All I was pointing out in my post is that it is meaningless to have the system as it currently is, you may as well just randomly list the entries because the rankings in NO way reflects a good representation of the good rated games… as per the examples I showed in my post.

The sentiment that you expressed is correct, it should be a fun and jovial part of the competition… but it should also be correct

Kevin, I totally agree, very well said! I can’t tell what is the right way of doing it and what isn’t since this is my first LD, so I lack a comparison base, but here’s how I see it:

I read the rules, made a game following the rules and submitted, was thrilled by receiving good and bad feedback, and now I’m completely AMAZED in getting 3rd place in the jam category! But the greatest part of it was really participating in this amazing community and learning to improve my craft, as you said. All that I learned is going to be directly applied to The Journey of Eko (www.pixelcows.com) and that’s much more than I could ever expect.

To the organizers: Kevin is buying you the first round of beer, I’m buying the second and some peanuts to go with it!